Val, the GIVER, is Given the Stink-Eye

Oh, how the worm has turned!

Val Thevictorian is no longer the life of the party, dancing merrily upon the faculty lunch table, a lampshade adorning her noggin, inciting all to good will and merriment. Now she is shunned, looked-at askance, persona non grata during the feedbag-strapping interlude.

Okay. So I never was the center of discussions with this group. My heyday has come and gone. I mostly chow down and clam up, not wanting to stir the pot, content to simmer silently and release my steam later. I sometimes nod in agreement. Add a pertinent fact, as long as it's something they could sip from the well of common knowledge, nothing robust that might leave a bad taste in their mouth.

It all started innocently enough. Somebody sipped coffee too quickly and coughed. Then another offered that the worst pain she ever had was when she took a drink of her piping hot coffee and sneezed some out her nose. And I saw an opening. A chance to contribute. Did I tell the story of my own high school lunch table, when I, the future valedictorian, sat across from an albino who laughed so hard at my joke that she shot a chili bean out her porcelain nostril? No. I did not tell that, because I feared that somebody might find such a tale off-putting. I did, however, use the moment to educate my dining companions on a recent bit of news from the world of science. Because I'm a giver like that.

"Hey! Did you see that story in the news yesterday? This lady went on vacation to some tropical country, and she kept having nosebleeds. She was kind of worried, but she didn't want to ruin her vacation. It wasn't a lot of blood, just a couple of drops here and there. She saw a little blob of congealed blood up in her nostril, kind of peeping out, but she did not want to dislodge it in case that would start a worse nosebleed. So she just left it alone, didn't pick at it, snorted it back in. As soon as she got back from vacation, she went to the doctor, and he pulled a 3-inch leech out of her nostril. He said she must have had it for about a month, and it kept getting bigger and bigger."

Well. You can't imagine how un-sciency and uninformed my colleagues are. The coffee snorter looked at me in pained horror. The dude who chews open-mouthed and rolls that food around on his tongue like a hot dog on a 7-Eleven Big Bite warmer closed his mouth and frowned at me. The gal who alternates meals of Ramen and Brach's Chocolate Covered Peanuts looked at me like "WTF?" And the one on my left who once squirted a tomato all over my shirt cupped her hand over her mouth like she might be refunding her lunch.

Seriously. I sit at that table and listen to their tales of their kids vomiting and how pink slime is used in fast food hamburgers and worm protein is in Taco Bell meat, and I don't have a conniption. Let the record show that only the worm-protein-cryer nodded that she, too, had read that story. It's not like I said that woman ATE the leech that the doctor pulled out of her nose. I don't know why they have to get all squeamish about nature.

I've half a mind not to share the scientific breakthrough in feces transplants. Did you hear? NOW the loose-boweled patients can take their feces transplant in a frozen capsule form. I don't know how they did it before, but this seems like it could only be an improvement.

For the strong of heart. The leech. Not the feces.